Fixing Lotus Notes so the inbox opens by default

Ever opened up your mailbox in Lotus Notes and for some reason it opens up by default one of your sub-folders instead of your inbox?

Someone at work had this issue and I felt like banging my head against the wall trying to find a resolution. Anyone who has to help maintain Lotus Notes knows my pain. Considering that Notes is used by so many companies, the amount of help resources online is surprisingly few.

After much searching, I found the answer though on a vaguely worded post on IBM’s Lotus Notes forums that was over 3-years old. It really sounded like a last gasp guess by someone, but with no reply saying if it actually worked.

Which it did!

All you need to do is delete, move, or rename your bookmarks.nsf file from your local Notes client Data folder. The next time Lotus Notes starts up, the bookmarks.nsf file will be recreated and Notes will once again default to your inbox when your mailbox is opened.

Warning: Keep in mind that any other settings made to the bookmarks.nsf file will be lost. For example, any changes to the vertical toolbar on the left side will be gone. That is why the best policy is to backup bookmarks.nsf first. You have been warned.

Hi, I know it may be a bit late. I’m not a Lotus Notes expert, actually it’s my first time working with it (I’ve been doing it for like 2 months now).

I found myself with the same issue and having a look at this you gave me an idea that I explain below.

I’m not on the admin side but one thing that worked for me is to open the mail, go to the folder/subfolder you want to set up as the default view and with that showing up, drag and drop the tab to the vertical toolbar. After that you can delete the previous bookmark/shortcut to the mail and it will do the trick. You can also have more than one bookmark for this, like having 3 diferent folders and choosing between which one to open.

You can also remove from workspace the mail database itself as well as all the bookmarks for it, then open it again from the right server. Sometimes it will be enough for opening it in the inbox. I don’t know exactly why it works in some scenarios and in some others it requires the bookmarks.nsf changing.

I have filters (rules) set-up for each person, so when new mail arrives it goes to the corresponding folder. I have “display popup alert” set-up for when new email arrives, it displays “OK” or “Open mail”, which goes to “Inbox”.

What I want to know is that is there a way to go straight to the folder where new email arrived, instead of “Inbox”?